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Thursday, February 28, 2019

Turning a gigantic ship
like the Titanic, under way with a full head of steam, is said to take a lot of
time and miles of open sea. Turning the Nutritional Guidelines for American is proving
to be equally difficult and time consuming. But Americans are changing their Way of Eating, slowly but surely. And this in spite of obdurate resistance from the
cabal of forces united in opposition: the USDA/HHS, Agri-Business, Big Pharma,
and the Medical Establishment.

That is hopeful, because
we all know what happened to the Titanic. And we are a nation of individuals of
free will. We are not confined
together on the deck of a ship. We are free to choose our own course. Admittedly,
however, in the absence of the certain
knowledge of our impending doom (metabolically speaking), combined with the lack of an assurance of the safety and
efficacy in choosing an Alternative course, we are reluctant to change our Way
of Eating. Most of us “go along for the ride,” blindly willing to follow the
course determined by our captains of public health and guided by the pursers of
the processed food industry. We are marshaled by the stewards (the media) who
serve us our daily reminders -- avoid
saturated fats, now called solid fats, and dietary cholesterol -- and the
clinicians who bus up after them all with myriad medications for our mounting metabolic
maladies (see #8).

Never mind that the course that we have been following was
based on a hypothesis that was based on a flawed epidemiological study (Ancel Keys’s
cherry-picked studies of 6, later 7, nations out of 22: see #3). Never mind that Keys, the father in
1953 of the Lipid Hypothesis, admitted in
1997: “There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol
in blood. We’ve known that all along. Cholesterol
in the diet doesn’t matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a
rabbit.” Never mind that “Epidemiological studies can only go to prove that an agent could have caused, but not that it did cause, an effect in any particular
case.” From the beginning, the dissenters never had a chance once the AHA got
behind the hypothesis with public advertising (and a fundraising effort)
promoting their “risk factors” for heart disease. Never mind that Keys and the AHA were wrongall along!

Never mind that the body synthesizes its own cholesterol
to compensate for the amount that we don’t
eat. Cholesterol is essential for all animal life. It is the essential
structural component of all cell membranes,
and it repairs damage from inflammation in our blood vessels. Did you know that the brain is the most cholesterol-rich
organ in the body, most coming from in situ
synthesis? And, that human breast milk contains loads of cholesterol?
And that it is needed to make bile acids, steroid hormones, and absorb the fat-soluble
Vitamins A, D, E and K.

Never mind that the evidence supporting saturated fat in the diet has been convincingly
documented. Never mind that those
pursuing low-fat diets in The Framingham Study had a higher incidence of all-cause
mortality. Never mind that after 40
years the director of The Framingham Study had to admit (July 1992, Archives of Internal Medicine): "In Framingham, Mass, the more saturated
fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower
the person's serum [blood] cholesterol.” This startling message has been
drowned out by the drum-beat from public health officials to lower cholesterol,
especially LDL-C, led by the AHA, Big Pharma, industrial food processors,
Medicare, Medicaid and by the clinical practitioners who peddle Big Pharma’s statin
drugs.

Never mind that… Well, you get the idea. If you are
interested in reading the evidence-based science out there, there are many good
books out by real science writers (not “hacks” like me) who look closely at the
evidence, even in early 2011 when this blog was originally written,. Maybe the
best is Gary Taubes’s “Good Calories – Bad Calories” (2007). His more
“accessible” “Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It” (Knopf, 2010) is an easy
read. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig’s “The
Truth About Saturated Fats,” is also a good read. And, Malcolm Kendrick’s “The
Great Cholesterol Myth” and Uffe Rafnskov’s “The Cholesterol Myths.” And, adding
just one of many books written since 2011: Nina Teicholz’s “Big Fat Surprise:
Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” (2014).

These writers would
create a food pyramid very different from the most recent HHS/USDA “Guidelines.”
But the latest guidelines do show signs of change. The Titanic has begun to
turn. You’ll see how in the next Retrospective.

About Me

I was diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic in 1986. I started a Very Low Carb diet (Atkins Induction) in 2002 to lose weight. I didn’t realize at the time that it would put my diabetes in clinical remission, or that I would be able to give up almost all of my oral diabetes meds. I also didn’t understand that, as I lost weight and continued to eat Very Low Carb, my blood lipids would dramatically improve (doubling my HDL and cutting my triglycerides by 2/3rds) and that my blood pressure would drop from 130/90 to 110/70 on the same meds.
Over the years I changed from Atkins to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics) and, altogether lost 170 pounds. I later regained some and then lost some. As long as I eat Very Low Carb, I am not hungry and I have lots of energy. And I no longer have any of the indications of Metabolic Syndrome.
My goal, as long as I have excess body fat, is to remain continuously in a ketogenic state, both for blood glucose regulation and continued weight loss. I expect that this regimen will continue to provide the benefits of reduced systemic inflammation, improved blood lipids and lower blood pressure as well.